Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Lately Apple's main competitors (Facebook, Google and Amazon) are getting very good ways to get in the middle of Apple and its customers. Apple usually detect these problems fairly quickly and is the kind of companies when it detects a problem and does not remain with folded arms. For example, once the best of 21st century computing platform, application developers for iOS found serious competition in strategic rivals that duplicated some of the most essential parts of the iPhone. Apple tried to ban it even before the federal government forced to it.

The competition is getting get between Apple and its customers

Last week, Facebook and Amazon revealed new applications and features for iOS: free voice calls via Facebook Messenger (U.S. only) and store MP3 songs and videos from Amazon. On the one hand these applications are a sign that these companies need iOS and scope of the iPhone and the iPad to reach millions of customers. But on the other hand, these applications, along with Google applications, show that Apple's competitors are doing really well for their applications systematically inserted between Apple and its customers.

Facebook, for now, is not making its own phone. Why would I do if they are fully inserted in the iPhone, which is already in millions of users? With the Facebook application for iOS and satellite applications like Instagram and Messenger, Mark Zuckerberg's company clearly wants to become the communication and social layer of the iPhone. And Facebook has a chance to do so, as it gives iPhone users than Apple with their default applications Messages, Phone and Camera.

Google, on the other hand, has its own devices. However, the company seems to be pointing to own and looking for productivity on the iPhone with Gmail, Drive, Chrome, Search and more. Google has had versions of these applications on iOS for a long time, but now have dramatically improved design and user interfaces to get back on top.

Meanwhile, Amazon also wants to compete with Apple launching its own hardware such as tablet and, surely, smartphones, take your empire of digital content directly to users of iTunes through iPhone, iPad and iPod.

It's good business for Apple to encourage and cultivate an application store with this type of offer (unlike almost since her first Mac). Furthermore, the model allows Apple App Store to act as guardian, and take up 30% of every application sold, including in-app sales.

But at least one case, we know that Apple had problems with this. We talked about, of course, maps. After the unfortunate mapping application that launched Apple to exclude Google, iOS users ask Google Maps screams back to the App Store. So it's easy to imagine what they want Facebook, Google and Amazon. Apple may still have the best product, but its strongest competitors are beginning to form deep relationships with users of the iPhone on the iPhone itself.

The problem

Unfortunately, it is unlikely that Apple can do something about it. One of the most formative periods in the history of the App Store was the summer of 2009. Apple had been implementing a policy in which third-party applications that mimic a "basic functionality" of its iPhone did not even reach the guardians of the App Store. It was working well until a really big fish got stuck in the net: Google Voice.

The consequence of this was an investigation by the FCC that took Apple and its partner AT & T, to step back and let Google Voice iOS launch in addition to clarifying the rules of the App Store. It's a good example to understand why Apple has to allow their larger competitors are in their platform, if they do not run the risk of a federal investigation.

What will happen next?

Facebook calls, music sales of Amazon or Google maps would not be a major concern for Apple if their own basic applications for iPhone are better than those offered by its competitors. But as the iOS platform matures, it is increasingly clear that Apple is falling behind.

This was not always so. In the early days of the iPhone, Apple set the tone for the better design and better user interfaces and iPhones showed what he could do with Safari, Photos, Siri, iTunes and more examples of what the best mobile developers should achieve . Why iOS now the team seems to have distracted and have been overtaken by the competition? Will it spent the absence of Will Scott to rise from the default iOS apps?.

Apple is a hardware company and mobile software, and this dual strategy is what has helped him reap the greatest benefits of the mobile industry. But if you do not invest in the mixture of these two parts is perfect, faces a near-term future in which the most important applications of the iPhone will not be developed by Apple.

One of the important things this year will be whether future versions of iOS will be able to compete head to head with the best development teams, especially with its main competitors, Apple to get back to having the best applications in the default iPhone.

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